


Tales from the First Warren

by Reishiin



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Folktales, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-20 19:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21061733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: Stories of El-ahrairah's warren, told by the rabbits who came after.1. El-ahrairah and the Great Vegetable Heist2. The White Rabbit of Inlé3. The Song of El-ahrairah and the General4. Deathless





	1. El-ahrairah and the Great Vegetable Heist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tanaqui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/gifts).
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told by Dandelion to the Watership rabbits, when one of them asked why King Darzin disliked El-ahrairah so. Prequel to El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit of Inlé.

One cold autumn, when the following winter was expected to be long and bitter, King Darzin ordered a tenth of all crop harvests in his kingdom to be brought to his palace in preparation. Now King Darzin's kingdom was very large, and he knew that to bring back the harvest from the far ends of the kingdom, the wagons would have to travel a very long distance. "Some rascal will surely try to steal the harvest on the way," thought King Darzin, and assigned a guard of his most trusted servants to the convoy.

Now El-ahrairah was also fretting about the impending winter, and how he would find enough food for all his rabbits. As he watched King Darzin's servants load the fine harvest of vegetables into those wagons, he said to Rabscuttle, "Look over yonder. King Darzin has so much food, far more than he and his court need in the winter. Why should he eat so well while we starve? Let us take only a little, and he will not even notice it is gone."

But El-ahrairah also noticed the many guards surrounding the convoy, and knew that he had to come upon the harvest not by force, but by trickery. That very day El-ahrairah gathered together the animals of the hedgerow, and even one or two of the elil whom King Darzin had in some way offended. "Let us work together this once," said El-ahrairah. "Help me take some of King Darzin's harvest, and we shall eat like kings in the winter."

So Nildro the blackbird lent El-ahrairah his nest to use for a hat to hide his ears, and Hawock the pheasant gave two bright feathers for El-ahrairah to wear as a tail. Thoroughly disguised, El-ahrairah waited in the hedgerow for the convoy of wagons to pass this way.

Soon enough El-ahrairah heard the rumbling of wheels, and he leaped out of the hedgerow into the road. "Welcome, welcome," said El-ahrairah. "You must be the great King Darzin's esteemed servants, are you not?"

"We are," replied the guard at the head of the convoy.

"And you have travelled a very long way with these very heavy burdens, have you not?"

"We have," said the guard.

"Ah, how weary you must be, and tired of the road!" exclaimed El-ahrairah. "Come, come, we shall have a great dinner party, and you shall eat and drink to your heart's content tonight."

"As long as we can keep the carts within sight," said the guard.

"Of course, of course," replied El-ahrairah brightly.

And so that evening King Darzin's guards dined with the hedgerow animals. Pfeffa the cat brought fish freshly caught from the river; Lendri the badger brought a platter of small birds. Yona the hedgehog brought slugs he had dug from the ground, and Nildro the blackbird brought red sweet berries in a pan.

El-ahrairah, the dinner party's most gracious host, had brought poppy seed, which earlier that day he and Rabscuttle had gathered from a field and ground between two stones to a fine powder. "The hedgerow's finest spices," said El-ahrairah, sprinkling a generous helping onto the feast. "Please, you must try it."

Soon enough, the King's whole convoy guard was fast asleep.

But El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle were not; they had eaten nothing of the feast, citing delicate stomachs, and nibbled instead on dry grass and tree bark.

Now, the conspirators set to work upon the harvest wagons. The blackbird and the pheasant went straight for the grain wagon; the hedgehog and the badger raided the stores of fruit, and even the cat feasted on the rats hiding in the wagons' dark corners. And as for El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle, they had made for the wagon with the vegetables, and now their eyes grew wide at the sight of the bountiful harvest. "The finest flayrah Lord Frith himself laid eyes on," said Rabscuttle in awe. "No rabbit will go hungry this winter."

Now Rabscuttle leaped off the wagon and thumped his back legs on the ground, and countless rabbits lying in wait now emerged from beneath the ground. Down that long, long line of rabbits El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle passed cabbages and lettuces and carrots and radishes, which would be stored underground for the winter in warrens all through the land. And then El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle replaced the stolen vegetables with stones taken from the road, so that King Darzin's convoy guards would not notice that their wagons had gotten lighter.

The next morning, the convoy guards awoke from their long and restful sleep, and talked of a strange dream where a thief walked through an open door, took a hunk of gold from a table, and replaced it with a rock. But none of them could quite explain the strangeness, and soon enough all they picked up their wagons and resumed their journey to King Darzin's palace.

If only all had gone as El-ahrairah planned! For King Darzin had summoned more food than his entire court could eat in three winters, and would hardly miss the vegetables El-ahrairah and his rabbits had taken. But King Darzin was a suspicious man, and he inspected each wagon of the convoy as it entered his storehouse. Soon enough he discovered the wagon that had been tampered with, and then he flew into a terrible rage; he questioned the convoy guards, but they could not say at all where or when the vegetables had turned into stones.

And one warm day in that long winter, King Darzin grew tired of staying in his palace, and went out to the countryside for a breath of fresh air. Now many of the animals had gone to sleep for the winter, or hid from the cold in scrapes in the ground or holes in the trees. But King Darzin saw El-ahrairah's rabbits running about the snow-covered fields, fat and happy, as if the cold and the snow did not bother them at all.

"El-ahrairah!" raged King Darzin. "It must be he who stole my harvest." But he could not drag El-ahrairah before Lord Frith and demand restitution, for he had no proof that El-ahrairah was his vegetable thief: not a cabbage leaf or a radish top so much as peeked out of a rabbit's burrow that winter. And so King Darzin could only storm back to his palace, thoroughly convinced he had been tricked, and he has seethed with rage at El-ahrairah and his rabbits ever since.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adapted (with many liberties) from the birthday gift heist from the novel Water Margin.
> 
> All Lapine translated using the [Bits'n'Bobstones fansite](http://bitsnbobstones.watershipdown.org/lapine/dictlaptoeng.html).


	2. The White Rabbit of Inlé

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told by Silverweed in the Warren of the Snares. He thinks something is very wrong with this story, but it is the only version of the Rabbit of Inlé he knows.

A long time ago, after Frith made the world, he sent his servant Prince Rainbow on a great journey across his land to gather stories.

Prince Rainbow visited the prosperous fields of King Darzin, and learned to grow all kinds of vegetables. He visited the hedgerow, where he caught worms and slugs with the lendri and the yona; he visited the farms, where the pfeffa and the rowf told him of man and his inventions. He visited the deep forest and the shadowy caves where the Thousand's eyes gleamed from the dark, and spoke to each of them in turn. And at the end of his great journey, when he had reached the far end of Frith's sunlit kingdom and gathered all the stories in the land, he turned around and started off for home.

Now Prince Rainbow was a servant of Lord Frith, and all his powers came from Lord Frith's light. During the night when Lord Frith slept, Prince Rainbow could not even see himself, let alone travel. Frustrated, he stopped by a rushing river to drink and rest, and planned to set off anew when Lord Frith rose again the next morning.

On that riverbank he met one of El-ahrairah's children, a rabbit by the name of Inlé who was the color of frost. In the night's deep darkness she shone with a strange light, like Lord Frith's radiance and yet not quite. "Though Lord Frith is sleeping now, some of his light remains in my fur," said Inlé to Prince Rainbow. "Since you cannot travel through the night, let me light your way, so that you will suffer no further delay."

And so the rabbit Inlé joined Prince Rainbow on his journey across Frith's lands. During the long nights, when weary Lord Frith slept beneath the horizon, she ran ahead of Prince Rainbow, and lit his way through the dark fields and long nights.

At long last, Prince Rainbow and the rabbit Inlé arrived at the gates to Frith's bright city. There Inlé tucked herself into the nook between the city wall and the open gate, lay down to rest, and did not move again. For Prince Rainbow was much bigger than she, and one step of his is a great distance for a rabbit. Inlé had run very far indeed over those many long nights, and she had exhausted her strength long before she exhausted her light.

"... Come outside," said the storyteller. He stood and led the listening rabbits out of the hall, up a run and into the open field beyond the warren. "Look up, now. Do you see the white rabbit in the sky?

"For Prince Rainbow came before Lord Frith in the shining citadel, and regaled the Lord with all the tales he had gathered on his travels. At the very end he told Lord Frith of the rabbit Inlé, who had lit his way on the long road home, and who had stopped running by the city gates. And Lord Frith was so moved by Inlé's sacrifice that he placed her likeness in the sky, where she still sheds light in the darkest of nights, and watches over us to this day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of trivia: there are many variations of the [moon rabbit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Rabbit_in_the_moon_standing_by_pot.png) myth, but the [Aztec version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanahuatzin) is hilarious: The gods didn't want the moon to shine as bright as the sun, so they threw a rabbit at the moon god's face to dim his light.


	3. The Song of El-ahrairah and the General

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Watership Owsla is very big on General stories, and when the trainees start spooking each other too much Bigwig summons Bluebell to sing this one to them.

"El-ahrairah, El-ahrairah," the General said. "What creature shall I fight today?"  
"A slug, a slug," El-ahrairah sang back. "Fight ye this slug, O General?"  
"Of course I will," the General said, and flung the slug into a nearby river.

"El-ahrairah, El-ahrairah," the General said. "What creature shall I fight today?"  
"A rabbit, a rabbit," El-ahrairah sang back. "Fight ye this rabbit, O General?"  
"Of course I will," the General said, and poor Rabscuttle limped for days.

"El-ahrairah, El-ahrairah," the General said. "What creature shall I fight today?"  
"A pfeffa, a pfeffa," El-ahrairah sang back. "Fight ye this pfeffa, O General?"  
"Of course I will," the General said, and all the hedgerow did not sleep for yowling.

"El-ahrairah, El-ahrairah," the General said. "What creature shall I fight today?"  
"A hrududu, a hrududu," El-ahrairah sang back. "Fight ye this hrududu, O General?"  
"Of course I will," the General said....

And that was the last El-ahrairah saw of him.


	4. Deathless

"This one's not about El-ahrairah," says Dandelion. "But those of you who have lived in other warrens, tell me, did you ever meet a rabbit who just _knew_ things? Not by sound or smell or sight, but things no other rabbit could know? Like if a hrududu was about to come up the black river?"

"I knew one," says Strawberry. "Strange fellow, he was."

"Oh, I remember him," replies Blackberry thoughtfully.

"... and you might ask, how do these rabbits know these things? No one really knows. It certainly wasn't part of Lord Frith's blessing to El-ahrairah. But some say..." He pauses. "It may be the Black Rabbit's."

Fu Inlé, Frith's fading light filters through the entrances to the Honeycomb, drawing each rabbit's shadow long before them. Dandelion looks round the Honeycomb for a rabbit he knows is not there: a rabbit who has abandoned the Honeycomb gatherings for a world of his own, one of grey mist and moonlight where time does not flow. And he says quietly, "This one's for you, Fiver. The one where a rabbit walked into the Black Rabbit's burrow and asked for a life back... and the Lord Inlé said yes."

In El-ahrairah's first warren, there lived a youngster named Valerian: a quiet sort, and rather unremarkable except for a talent for finding clover. His brother Marjoram, an outskirter with an ambition for the Owsla, had gone out with a scouting party earlier that day; fu Inlé the party returned without him, and reported to the Chief Rabbit that Marjoram had had a bad run-in with a hrududu.

The warren murmured among themselves. It is a sorrowful day when a rabbit stops running, but such is the way of the world Frith made: rabbits come, and rabbits go. But Valerian, usually so quiet, now stood up and said, "I will go to the Black Rabbit and bring him back."

"We must go when the Black Rabbit calls," said one of the Owsla. "There is no arguing with fate."

"But the Black Rabbit __didn't__ call for Marjoram, did he? It wasn't elil, and it wasn't old age that came for him. His life was cut short like a bitten-through rope." 

Ignoring the arguments and advice of the warren, Valerian went up a run and emerged into the night. Inlé waxed full that night, and a path of clear moonlight lay over the grass. Valerian knew it was the way to the Black Rabbit's domain, and set one foot upon that silver path, and then another, and then another. The silver ribbon stretched out long before him, like the scent of a rabbit's chin glands in the wind, and disappeared into the distance where the field met night sky. Valerian wound that silver skein around his front paws like a spool of thread, and followed it where it led.

He followed that skein of moonlight far, through rough barren fields, across black rivers, up a tall hill and then down it again. He walked through a misty valley where time seemed to stand still, where Lord Frith slept just beneath the horizon, shedding light without showing his face, painting the sky deep red and gray. He walked through a long wide cave where an iron road passed straight through, so still and quiet he could hear the wind whistling by its entrance. He walked through a white fog so damp it plastered his fur to his back like rain.

How could the scouting party have gone this far? Valerian, half-tharn from fear and exhaustion, did not know. But on and on he followed that silver ribbon until finally he arrived at the grey river that flowed through the Black Rabbit's domain, where rabbits go to drink deep and leave behind their memories of that other, sunlit world.

Valerian took a deep breath and jumped. He paddled with all his might across the rushing water, surfacing every so often for breath. He kept his nose and mouth tightly closed while he was under the water so that he would not swallow any of it, lest he forget entirely his reason for seeking an audience with the Black Rabbit.

After swimming for what seemed like forever, finally, finally, his nose bumped the opposite bank. He dragged himself exhausted and sopping wet out of the river onto the grassy ground, which was bone-dry to the touch and grey like the sky. He rolled over several times until his fur was no longer damp, and waited there shivering in the half-darkness until finally the shadows of the Black Rabbit's Owsla came for him.

Before the Black Rabbit in his cavernous dark burrow, Valerian planted his paws firmly into the ground so he would not tremble. "I have come to bring my brother home," he said.

"Bargains, bargains," the Black Rabbit murmured, like a whisper of wind through leaves, or the first touch of winter frost. "Very well. If you can defeat me in a contest of bob-stones." And as the stones were cast, the Black Rabbit and all his Owsla's eyes all turned upon Valerian, gleaming red in the dark burrow.

Those shadows terrified Valerian, but they did not strike frost into his heart. For Valerian had been the runt of the litter, weak and sick, and for the first three months of his life he had walked back and forth and back and forth on the border between the grey field and the Black Rabbit's domain. He had already seen and heard and smelled all the horrors that came to pass in this place; he had been brought before Inlé-rah once before and yet returned to Lord Frith alive, and nothing about these shadows now could freeze his heart to stillness again.

So Valerian stood up, gathered up his paws—for it was indeed very cold here—sat down, ears pressed flat against his back, and concentrated upon the stones that had been cast. Now, bob-stones is a game largely of chance. But Marjoram Owsla-hopeful had taught Valerian a few counting tricks, and by the luck of the draw—or perhaps the skill of spiriting certain stones strategically away from the board whilst pulling one's paws away from the cast—Valerian won that game, narrowly, by just one mark.

The Black Rabbit looked at Valerian's paws, tucked beneath his body where he sat, and then looked away.

Now, the Black Rabbit said, you must also beat me in a contest of storytelling.

The Black Rabbit began a chilling tale of fear and darkness then, and where those words entered Valerian's ears, they struck frost into his veins, and threatened to stop his heart. But alongside the story Valerian remembered a warm dark burrow where his mother and littermates had all been; during those long dark days they had warmed his small cold body with their own, their presence keeping the Black Rabbit's calling voice at bay. Now, that memory did the same. The Black Rabbit's voice and the tale he told, though, sharp and cold as winter wind, no longer held power over him.

The Black Rabbit saw that Valerian was unmoved by his story, and at last he fell silent and said, "Very well. It is your turn to deliver a tale."

"Tell me, my Lord," Valerian said softly, "How long has it been since Lord Frith last came to visit?"

And so he began a story of sunlit days; of winter frost melting and watering the first primroses of spring, of young bucks who fought Owsla over patches of clover, and yearlings who scattered at the first whiff of elil in the air. He spoke of high places where rabbits fed and slept and ran through grass like wind; where young does kindled litters in fur-lined nesting burrows, and rabbits gathered to listen to stories upon stories in a wide underground hollow. 

The Black Rabbit's Owsla surrounded them both, and during the telling they too seemed to be dreaming. Their shadowy ears pricked up and their whiskers twitched, as if they too were remembering long-ago lives from before Inlé-rah had found them: when they too had lived as rabbits and run free and far across across Frith's wide fields.

"... and when you call, Lord Inlé, we lay down all our burdens and follow you without question. One day, we both will come back here, and take our places among your warren. But not yet, My Lord. Not while there is still flayrah to eat and hraka to pass and hombil to laugh at while we escape down burrows under their very noses.

"That is all I ask from you, my Lord. A little more time."

And the Black Rabbit looked past Valerian's still form, past the mouth of his burrow, to the unwalked grey field that lay between Frith's domain and his own. It seemed that during the telling of that story, some of Frith's light had passed through that field, bringing with it the first dawn of hrair days. For a moment, the Black Rabbit even thought he smelled dew and green grass. But that was impossible in that place.

After a long time, the Black Rabbit said, "Very well." At that, one of the Owsla broke away from the shadowy mass and disappeared down a burrow to the side. When that shadow emerged again, he brought the lost rabbit Marjoram out of its dark depths with him, and spun out anew before them the moonlight thread of Marjoram's cut-short life.

The Black Rabbit led Valerian and Marjoram both to the near edge of the grey field, and showed them the silver path of moonlight through the grass. "This is the way back to Frith's world," said the Black Rabbit. "It is filled with peril. But El-ahrairah's gifts live on in you... and so do mine. From this day on, you will always know the way back to this in-between world.

"Now go, little ones. Run, run for your lives, and do not look back for anything, and you will be safe when Frith's light touches your fur again."

Then the whispering shadow and the silence was gone, and Valerian and his brother set off running down that moonlight path, the sounds of night and the elil closing in all around them.

Screeches filled the air overhead, and the shadows of taloned birds fell over the grass. From the hedgerow came sharp rustling and the sounds of twigs breaking beneath weight; the stink of elil was thick upon the wind. Behind them, the sharp snap of jaws, the hot breath of hombil on their heels--

The first rule of running is to never look back.

_The Black Rabbit is a rabbit too,_ Valerian thought, ears flattened against his back as he raced through the night. _And now his blessing goes with us._

And so he and Marjoram wound their hind legs tight, and together they sprinted ever quicker through that grey field. Past sweeping talons and snapping jaws they ran and ran, twin shadows beneath Inlé's half-light, until at long last they reached the grey field's far end where the moonlit path vanished into daylight. And when Frith's light was no longer blinding to their eyes, they saw that they were back in a familiar patch of tall grass, on the sunny end of the wide field where El-ahrairah's warren was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An amalgamation of Fiver Beyond and the Orpheus myth.


End file.
